China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom

by Richard Baum

This audacious and illuminating memoir by Richard Baum, a senior China scholar and sometime policy advisor, reflects on forty years of learning about and interacting with the People’s Republic of China, from the height of Maoism during the author’s UC Berkeley student days in the volatile 1960s through globalization. Anecdotes from Baum’s professional life illustrate the alternately peculiar, frustrating, fascinating, and risky activity of China watching ― the process by which outsiders gather and decipher official and unofficial information to figure out what’s really going on behind China’s veil of political secrecy and propaganda. Baum writes entertainingly, telling his narrative with witty stories about people, places, and eras.

China Watcher will appeal to scholars and followers of international events who lived through the era of profound political and academic change described in the book, as well as to younger, post-Mao generations, who will enjoy its descriptions of the personalities and political forces that shaped the modern field of China studies.

Genres: China, History, Nonfiction, Memoir

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads' database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Dr. Richard Baum is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at UCLA, where he specializes in the study of modern Chinese politics and foreign relations. He earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Baum has lived and lectured extensively throughout China and Asia. He has served as Visiting Professor or Visiting Scholar at institutions including Peking University, Meiji Gakuin University (Japan), The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Princeton University, and Arizona State University, where he was honored as Distinguished Visiting Scholar for 2008.

He is the author/editor of nine books, including Prelude to Revolution: Mao, the Party, and the Peasant Question, 1962–1966; and a personal memoir, China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom.

Professor Baum has served on the boards of the National Committee on United States-China Relations and the Joint Committee on Contemporary China of the Social Science Research Council. He has been a consultant to numerous public and private agencies, including the White House, the United Nations, and the RAND Corporation. He is also a frequent commentator on Chinese and East Asian affairs for the BBC World Service, CNN International, and National Public Radio.

Reviews

[Nathaniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I purchased this book after finishing Professor Baum's Great Courses lecture series, "Fall and Rise of China". I loved this series and wanted more by Baum, who died in 2012.

In that respect, this book was only half good, because half of the chapters are literally word for word repeated in the Great Courses lecture. I found so many chapters where every paragraph was so familiar that I skipped past them. The rest of the book is background information of a more personal or less general nature that Baum edited out of the course. Most of this describes his career in greater detail, but there is also a highlight chapter detailing his visit to Tibet in the early 2000s that is well worth reading. One other difficulty I had with this book is that it seems to pick up in the middle of Chinese history without much context unless you've also taken Baum's course or happen to be a professional "China watcher". However, if you've taken Baum's course, half of the book is the same content twice. So part of me is wondering whom he wrote the book for.

Overall, it was decent, and part of me is sorry that Baum didn't write anything else for a general audience. However, given that he didn't seem to have much content beyond what he put in the course and some extras that he put in this book, maybe that's for the best.

[Ted Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like Richard Baum. "...academic disputes tend to be nastier than real-world battles precisely because the stakes are so low. And thus it is not unusual for scholars in the same field to trade cleverly veiled (or not so veiled) barbs at academic meetings and in the pages of learned journals."

Baum's dedication to puzzling over Chinese politics is inspirational. His good sense of humor, nuanced understanding of court politics, appreciation for history, desire to push the envelope, and willingness to admit mistakes, made him a good scholar. It was fun to read his memoirs. He ended up being a bit too naive and sanguine about China's political trajectory. Baum thought the arrival of the 2020s would herald a China that was moving towards, not away from political reform. I'd wonder what he would make of Xi Jinping.

[Snowfire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusing enough anecdotes combined with a history of some more accessible parts of modern Chinese history. The author can be a bit self-aggrandizing, which he admits to in the intro, and I found it annoying at times, but whatever. I get the impression that at least some of the time, he has enough self-awareness to poke fun at his own occasional pomposity.

[William Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining insights into the recent historical development of China and to the academic life of a noted Sinologist.

[clickingsound · Rating 3 out of 5]

Baum probably didn’t use a ghost writer. This felt like a grandfather’s fireplace chat. It’s serious, humble, but deeply personal